The Times added a note at the top of the column with Mr. Horsey’s apology, which said the description was “insensitive and failed to meet the standards of our newspaper.”

Almost all of the first two paragraphs of the column were removed and a “For the Record” was added reiterating that the language was not up to The Times’s standards.

An email to the White House press office and to Ms. Sanders seeking comment on Saturday night was not returned.

Mr. Horsey has been drawing political cartoons and accompanying them with short commentary at The Times since 2012. His “Top of the Ticket” feature is syndicated and appears three times a week.

Mr. Horsey said that “because of timing,” his story had been edited only by the newsroom’s copy desk. That work flow is “something that’s clearly going to be assessed,” he said.

Asked if he had been disciplined, Mr. Horsey said, “Not that I know of,” adding, “Obviously there’s a lot of concern.”

A spokeswoman for The Times did not respond to an email seeking comment late on Saturday.

It was not clear who exactly oversees Mr. Horsey. In emails, top Times editors said he did not report to and was not edited by the newspaper’s national desk or Washington bureau. The editors also said he did not report to Juliet Lapidos, the editor of the op-ed page and the Sunday opinion section; that desk does not edit him either, they said.

Mr. Horsey said he became aware of the criticism of his story when a colleague called his attention to an article on the right-wing site Breitbart News and when Ms. Lapidos called him.

Mr. Horsey said the offending paragraphs had been his attempt to find a “light way to ease into” the broader topic of the commentary, which he said was about Ms. Sanders’s truthfulness.

“She’s a mom,” he said. “She’s someone you can kind of identify with. That’s what I had in my head.”

He continued: “When I read over how I wrote it, it can be taken as a much nastier shot, and believe it or not, I didn’t mean it that way. The paragraphs looking back were incredibly foolish and obtuse. I just failed to see how those words were going to be received.”

Still, he said he believed the response to his column was “so beyond the offense” that it felt to him like an “attack from the outrage machine.”

In addition to comments about his own physical attributes, critics attacked his daughter, wife and mother, he said.

Mr. Horsey noted that his daughter is a “very progressive young woman.”